Once in a great while a science fiction story is so visionary, yet so close to impending scientific developments that it becomes not only an accurate predictor, but itself the locus for new discoveries and development. True Names by Vernor Vinge, first published in 1981, is such a work. Here is a feast of articles by computer scientists and journalists on the cutting edge of th...(展开全部)

Disaffected computer wizard "Mr. Slippery" (True Name Roger Pollack) is an early adopter of a new full-immersion virtual reality technology called the Other Plane. He and the other wizards form a cabal to keep their true identities — their True Names — secret to avoid prosecution by their "Great Adversary" — the government of the United States. The lines that define us are not ...(展开全部)

Stamped with his signature depth of vision, lucidity, and clarity, Thich Nhat Hanh's insights based on the wisdom of the Lotus Sutra invoke a wide range of contemporary topics and concerns. He demonstrates the practical and direct applicability of Buddhist teachings to today's issues, from the Palestinian-Israeli tragedy to the threat of terrorism and the degradation of our env...(展开全部)

Set against the backdrop of a lush and exotic Greece, The Names is considered the book which began to drive "sharply upward the size of his readership" ("Los Angeles Times Book Review"). Among the cast of DeLillo's bizarre yet fully realized characters in The Names are Kathryn, the narrator's estranged wife; their son, the six-year-old novelist; Owen, the scientist; and the neu...(展开全部)

Risk analyst James Axton lives in Athens and works across Greece and the Middle East, part of a community of American ex-pats that includes his estranged wife and child. Their peripatetic existence is interrupted when a horrific, unexplained murder on the island of Kouros becomes the catalyst for Axton becoming embroiled in a dizzying conspiracy of ritualistic violence, cultism...(展开全部)

Set against the backdrop of a lush and exotic Greece, The Names is considered the book which began to drive "sharply upward the size of his readership" ("Los Angeles Times Book Review"). Among the cast of DeLillo's bizarre yet fully realized characters in The Names are Kathryn, the narrator's estranged wife; their son, the six-year-old novelist; Owen, the scientist; and the neu...(展开全部)

Risk analyst James Axton lives in Athens and works across Greece and the Middle East, part of a community of American ex-pats that includes his estranged wife and child. Their peripatetic existence is interrupted when a horrific, unexplained murder on the island of Kouros becomes the catalyst for Axton becoming embroiled in a dizzying conspiracy of ritualistic violence, cultism...(展开全部)

For the past 12 billion years, galaxies have governed the Universe, bringing form to the firmament, light to the void. Each one a giant system of as many as hundreds of billions of stars, the galaxies are the building blocks of the cosmos, and through new data from modern telescopes - including the Hubble Space Telescope -we are discovering dizzying new facts about how they for...(展开全部)